In mathematics, Itô's lemma is an identity used in Itô calculus to find the differential of a time-dependent function of a stochastic process. It serves as the stochastic calculus counterpart of the chain rule. It can be heuristically derived by forming the Taylor series expansion of the function up to its second derivatives and retaining terms up to first order in the time increment and second order in the Wiener process increment. The lemma is widely employed in mathematical finance, and its best known application is in the derivation of the Black–Scholes equation for option values.
Contents
- Informal derivation
- Mathematical formulation of Its lemma
- It drift diffusion processes due to Kunita Watanabe
- Poisson jump processes
- Non continuous semimartingales
- Multiple Non continuous Jump Processes
- Geometric Brownian motion
- Dolans Dade exponential
- BlackScholes formula
- References
Itô's lemma, which is named after Kiyosi Itô, is occasionally referred to as the Itô–Doeblin theorem in recognition of posthumously discovered work of Wolfgang Doeblin.
Note that while Itô's lemma was proved by Kiyosi Itô, Itô's theorem, a result in group theory, is due to Noboru Itô.
Informal derivation
A formal proof of the lemma relies on taking the limit of a sequence of random variables. This approach is not presented here since it involves a number of technical details. Instead, we give a sketch of how one can derive Itô's lemma by expanding a Taylor series and applying the rules of stochastic calculus.
Assume Xt is a Itô drift-diffusion process that satisfies the stochastic differential equation
where Bt is a Wiener process. If f(t,x) is a twice-differentiable scalar function, its expansion in a Taylor series is
Substituting Xt for x and therefore μt dt + σt dBt for dx gives
In the limit as dt → 0, the terms dt2 and dt dBt tend to zero faster than dB2, which is O(dt). Setting the dt2 and dt dBt terms to zero, substituting dt for dB2, and collecting the dt and dB terms, we obtain
as required.
Mathematical formulation of Itô's lemma
In the following subsections we discuss versions of Itô's lemma for different types of stochastic processes.
Itô drift-diffusion processes (due to: Kunita-Watanabe)
In its simplest form, Itô's lemma states the following: for an Itô drift-diffusion process
and any twice differentiable scalar function f(t,x) of two real variables t and x, one has
This immediately implies that f(t,Xt) is itself an Itô drift-diffusion process.
In higher dimensions, if
for a vector
where ∇X f is the gradient of f w.r.t. X, HX f is the Hessian matrix of f w.r.t. X, and Tr is the trace operator.
Poisson jump processes
We may also define functions on discontinuous stochastic processes.
Let h be the jump intensity. The Poisson process model for jumps is that the probability of one jump in the interval [t, t + Δt] is hΔt plus higher order terms. h could be a constant, a deterministic function of time, or a stochastic process. The survival probability ps(t) is the probability that no jump has occurred in the interval [0, t]. The change in the survival probability is
So
Let S(t) be a discontinuous stochastic process. Write
Let z be the magnitude of the jump and let
Define
Then
Consider a function
If
Itô's lemma for a process which is the sum of a drift-diffusion process and a jump process is just the sum of the Itô's lemma for the individual parts.
Non-continuous semimartingales
Itô's lemma can also be applied to general d-dimensional semimartingales, which need not be continuous. In general, a semimartingale is a càdlàg process, and an additional term needs to be added to the formula to ensure that the jumps of the process are correctly given by Itô's lemma. For any cadlag process Yt, the left limit in t is denoted by Yt−, which is a left-continuous process. The jumps are written as ΔYt = Yt − Yt−. Then, Itô's lemma states that if X = (X1, X2, ..., Xd) is a d-dimensional semimartingale and f is a twice continuously differentiable real valued function on Rd then f(X) is a semimartingale, and
This differs from the formula for continuous semi-martingales by the additional term summing over the jumps of X, which ensures that the jump of the right hand side at time t is Δf(Xt).
Multiple Non-continuous Jump-Processes
There is also a version of this for a twice-continuously differentiable in space once in time function f evaluated at (potentially different) non-continuous semi-martingales which may be written as follows:
where
Geometric Brownian motion
A process S is said to follow a geometric Brownian motion with constant volatility σ and constant drift μ if it satisfies the stochastic differential equation dS = S(σdB + μdt), for a Brownian motion B. Applying Itô's lemma with f(S) = log(S) gives
It follows that
exponentiating gives the expression for S,
The correction term of − σ2/2 corresponds to the difference between the median and mean of the log-normal distribution, or equivalently for this distribution, the geometric mean and arithmetic mean, with the median (geometric mean) being lower. This is due to the AM–GM inequality, and corresponds to the logarithm being convex down, so the correction term can accordingly be interpreted as a convexity correction. This is an infinitesimal version of the fact that the annualized return is less than the average return, with the difference proportional to the variance. See geometric moments of the log-normal distribution for further discussion.
The same factor of σ2/2 appears in the d1 and d2 auxiliary variables of the Black–Scholes formula, and can be interpreted as a consequence of Itô's lemma.
Doléans-Dade exponential
The Doléans-Dade exponential (or stochastic exponential) of a continuous semimartingale X can be defined as the solution to the SDE dY = Y dX with initial condition Y0 = 1. It is sometimes denoted by Ɛ(X). Applying Itô's lemma with f(Y) = log(Y) gives
Exponentiating gives the solution
Black–Scholes formula
Itô's lemma can be used to derive the Black–Scholes equation for an option. Suppose a stock price follows a geometric Brownian motion given by the stochastic differential equation dS = S(σdB + μ dt). Then, if the value of an option at time t is f(t, St), Itô's lemma gives
The term ∂f/∂S dS represents the change in value in time dt of the trading strategy consisting of holding an amount ∂ f/∂S of the stock. If this trading strategy is followed, and any cash held is assumed to grow at the risk free rate r, then the total value V of this portfolio satisfies the SDE
This strategy replicates the option if V = f(t,S). Combining these equations gives the celebrated Black–Scholes equation